As an environment-friendly vehicle in recent years, attention is focused on an electric powered vehicle that has a power storage device (for example, a secondary battery, capacitor or the like) mounted and that runs using the driving force generated from the electric power stored in the power storage device. Such an electric powered vehicle includes, for example, an electric vehicle, a hybrid vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle, and the like.
Such electric powered vehicles may have a motor generator incorporated for receiving electric power from the power storage device at the time of starting or at the time of acceleration to generate a driving force for running, and for generating power by the regenerative braking at the time of braking to store electrical energy in the power storage device. In order to control the motor generator according to the running state, the electric powered vehicle is mounted with a power conversion device converting electric power by a converter, inverter, or the like.
The power conversion device includes a smoothing capacitor of a large capacitance for stabilizing the supplied DC power. During operation of the power conversion device, charge corresponding to the applied voltage is stored at the smoothing capacitor.
The charge stored at the smoothing capacitor must be discharged promptly when collision of the vehicle occurs.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-020952 (PTD 1) discloses a configuration of a vehicle with an electric motor as one driving source, wherein an IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) in an inverter circuit is switching-controlled so as to prevent generation of torque at the electric motor by an HV-ECU, when collision of the vehicle is expected during vehicle running, to discharge the charge from the capacitor in the inverter.